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Amanpour
Parents of Kidnapped Journalist Speak Out; Iran Cracks Down on Dissent
Aired December 13, 2012 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.
The rebels could win in Syria. No, that is not an assessment from the opposition or from the West. It's a stunning observation from one of Assad's biggest backers, Russia.
Perhaps staring reality in the face, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said that Syrian rebels have gained so much territory that the Assad regime could soon collapse. And now Moscow is preparing for a possible evacuation of its citizens in Syria.
Journalists reporting from Syria risk their lives every day to get the story out. Several have been killed and wounded since the war began nearly two years ago. Some Syrian rebel faction is claiming to be with the Free Syrian Army and has allegedly kidnapped and threatened to execute a Ukrainian journalist.
And then there's the mystery of the American freelance journalist, Austin Tice. He went to Syria in May and he's written for several U.S. newspapers, including "The Washington Post".
But in mid-August, Tice's parents and his editors started to get worried. They hadn't heard from him in days and instinctively they felt that something was wrong.
And they were correct. Tice had gone missing. Then in December, there was a video. It shows armed men leading the blindfolded 31-year-old Tice up a hill, and he is visibly distressed. The captors purport to be jihadists, but analysts say the video appears to be staged and that the masked men may not be jihadists after all.
The U.S. State Department says it believes Tice is actually being held by the Syrian government. Damascus, though, denies it.
Tice's parents, understandably, are frantic and they rarely speak publicly. But tonight, Marc and Debra Tice want the world to know what drove their son to Syria and they want to appeal for his safe return.
My interview with them in a moment. But first, a look at what's coming up a little later in the program.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): There's no Tehran spring. Civil society and human rights squeezed in Iran.
And for almost 50 days, a jailed Iranian activist refused to swallow the government line -- or anything else.
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AMANPOUR: We'll have all that in a moment, but first, my conversation with Debra and Marc Tice, parents of Austin Tice, the freelance journalist missing in Syria.
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AMANPOUR: Mr. and Ms. Tice, welcome to the program.
This must be agonizing for you. When did you first know that your son, Austin, was missing?
MARC TICE, FATHER OF MISSING JOURNALIST: Well, we first knew shortly after August 13th, which was the last day we had correspondence with him. It had been very regular prior to that, the entire time he was in Syria.
But after the 13th a few days went by and there was no contact. And we contacted his editors, who had also not heard from him. And that's when we knew, you know, something wasn't right.
AMANPOUR: And you heard -- you got a last tweet from him, didn't you? "Spent the day at an FSA pool party with music by Taylor Swift"?
"They even bought me whiskey. Hands down the best birthday ever."
He sounded upbeat. He sounded happy and all right.
DEBRA TICE, MOTHER OF MISSING JOURNALIST: (Inaudible).
MARC TICE: Yes, there was --
DEBRA TICE: Yes.
MARC TICE: -- nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, it was his normal, full-of-life self.
AMANPOUR: Do you think, Mr. Tice, that your son is still alive?
MARC TICE: Yes. Absolutely.
DEBRA TICE: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: You do?
DEBRA TICE: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And it's not a parent's blind faith? You really believe, from what you know, that he's still alive?
DEBRA TICE: Correct.
AMANPOUR: You know, and I think all of us were shocked by the video that was released online about a month after you last heard from him.
MARC TICE: Yes.
AMANPOUR: It looked extremely scary. When that video came out, it must have been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you saw your son. He was alive. And on the other hand, he looked terrified and under real distress and duress.
What went through your heart?
DEBRA TICE: Well, Marc saw it first and he was up in the middle of the night. And I came in and I said, "Why are you up?" And he just looked at me like he wasn't ready to tell me why he was awake.
And finally he told me why he was awake and I actually went into physical shock when I saw it. And it took me awhile to just get back to center and take the message that was being given. You know, and that's been where I've held my hope, is the message, the only message of that video is that he's still alive. So that's my message and we're going to get him.
MARC TICE: Yes, it was shocking. And no parents, no family should see their son, their child, their sibling, in those circumstances. But it was a two-edged sword, because it was the first we've seen of him, as you said, in many weeks. It showed that he's alive. And we hope that it ultimately will lead to contact from whoever it was that made the video that's holding him.
So that's what we hope for.
AMANPOUR: The United States believes that the Assad regime has Austin.
And do you agree with that?
MARC TICE: We know he went missing when he was in Syria. We have spoken with people representing the opposition. We've spoken with people representing the government. Both sides, both parties involved say they don't know where he is. And so it's not profitable for us to speculate. We simply want to reach out to anyone that can have influence, find him, give him back to us.
AMANPOUR: How is the United States government helping you? And are they?
MARC TICE: Yes. They are and we've been, you know, blessed to receive the help and the resources that they've provided. We just came from Washington, D.C., and the purpose of that trip really was to help ensure that those resources, you know, remain engaged.
So we're very happy with that help and with the help of many, many other people, including community of journalists and others.
AMANPOUR: Tell me, Ms. Tice, about your son. I mean, here we are, talking about him now, missing in Syria. But what possessed him to go to Syria in the middle of a raging civil war?
DEBRA TICE: He has a passionate heart. That's the bottom line. And he had kept -- he likes to know what's going on in the world. He kept hearing that there were stories that were out, but they couldn't be verified, because it was too dangerous. And he said, I'm someone that can go. I can face that danger because this story is important. And that's what motivated him.
AMANPOUR: He wrote a very dramatic and heartfelt Facebook page, and it was picked up -- I think reprinted with your permission -- in "The Washington Post".
And he said something. He said, I suppose answering maybe people's questions about him, "No, I don't have a death wish. I have a life wish. So I'm living in a place at a time with a people where life means more than anywhere I've ever been.
"Coming here to Syria is the greatest thing I've ever done. And it's the greatest feeling of my life."
It sounds like there was something missing in his life, there was some sort of mission that he felt that he had to undertake.
Is that right?
MARC TICE: Well, I don't know if I'd put it quite that way, but that's so much like Austin. He is a passionate person. And if you're Austin's friend or become Austin's friend, he'll ask you, "What do you want in your life?" And when you tell him, if you're not doing it, he will hound you until you do.
And so, he has a great love for people that are doing something that's meaningful. And that's what he saw happening in the region.
AMANPOUR: And he also wrote, he said, "Listen, it's very nice, but quit telling me to stay safe. I'm here doing something important."
What must it be like for a mother to see her son go off in this -- in this state of affairs?
DEBRA TICE: Well, it's difficult, but Austin trained me. He's my first child of seven. And he taught me how to be a mom, which was, if he's going to be on his life path, then my job is to support that.
AMANPOUR: So there was never any question that either of you would have tried to dissuade him from going?
DEBRA TICE: It wouldn't have been possible.
MARC TICE: No, we've learned much better than that.
AMANPOUR: Did you try?
MARC TICE: No, I don't think we did. But what we did was --
DEBRA TICE: No.
MARC TICE: -- try to make sure he had thought through everything he could, that he knew how to be safe, that he had backup and support. So.
AMANPOUR: What must it be like at home right now? He's got six other siblings. I know many of them are grown and here we are in the holiday season. What are the siblings going through? How has it affected the family dynamic?
DEBRA TICE: Thank you, Christiane, for asking that. I really want to be able to say that his siblings have been amazingly strong. They are somewhat tired as being referred to as "the other children." They've been really understanding and supportive.
I think with Thanksgiving coming and going and not being able to include him, everybody's going to be home for Christmas. I think everyone's a little more tender and a little more sensitive now than they have been. But they've been amazingly strong.
And they just want their brother home.
AMANPOUR: And of course this program is seen around the world and maybe even in Syria. If you were able to speak to your son now, what would you say to him, Mr. Tice?
MARC TICE: Well, first I would say that we love him.
Austin, we love you. And we're doing everything we can to get you safely home.
And I would ask the people with him to keep him safe and tell us what we need to do to get him back with our family.
AMANPOUR: Ms. Tice?
DEBRA TICE: I would tell him how much I love him, that I hold him so tenderly in my heart and that we will not give up. We will see him home.
Stay strong, keep the faith, do not lose hope.
AMANPOUR: We're in a situation right now where people are saying, analysts are saying that this could be the last of the Assad regime. Of course, many people have said that for the last nearly two years. And the fighting has carried on.
What are your feelings of when you read the news about what's going on in Syria?
How does it -- I presume that everything you read, you read through the lens of how it will affect your son.
MARC TICE: Of course. I mean, we do read everything. And we're always concerned at how any development might affect his situation. Unfortunately, we don't know the details of his situation. So you know, what we can try to do is reach out to the people that may be able to protect him, find him, return him.
And so that's what we're doing. And we're doing that without regard to politics, because it's our son and that's what we're focused on.
AMANPOUR: And we've had some pictures of his work, the photos that he took while he was still able to broadcast them and have them printed, or put them online.
What was he trying to show with his work? There were lots of pictures of children as well as pictures of the rebel forces he was with.
DEBRA TICE: He was compelled to tell the story. This is -- this is their future. And he wants their story to be told. He wants them to have their story and to believe -- it's so important to Austin for people to have a dream and to believe they can achieve it and to take steps to do that.
AMANPOUR: He sounds like a very idealistic boy. Is he?
MARC TICE: Idealistic? I don't think idealist because he's practical and, I mean, he has dreams and passions that he believes are achievable. So yes, he has ideals, but his actions are based on what he thinks he can do positively to help.
AMANPOUR: Mr. and Ms. Tice, thank you very much for joining me.
MARC TICE: Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity.
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AMANPOUR: And getting the story has never been more dangerous. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, some 232 reporters have been imprisoned this year, a record high. Fifteen of those were imprisoned in Syria. Twenty-eight others, like our colleagues, have been killed there this year, making Syria the most dangerous place on Earth for journalists.
And after a break, we'll turn to Iran, with 45 journalists in prison and human rights in shackles there, it's an uncivil society in the making.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. And now turning to Iran, where an increasing number of activists, human rights lawyers, bloggers and journalists are fleeing the country, fearing arbitrary arrests, detention and even death.
Faraz Sanei monitors Iran for Human Rights Watch and has a new report on how the government's crackdown is decimating the country's civil society.
Welcome.
FARAZ SANEI, IRAN RESEARCHER, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: Thanks for being here.
You know, many people would have -- not have even known that there was any civil society to begin with in Iran. What is your report concentrating on and what conclusion do you draw?
SANEI: The report, Christiane, is essentially about the slow strangulation of civil society in Iran. Unlike many of its neighbors, Iran has actually had a very vibrant civil society, especially during Khatami, former President Khatami's era.
Unfortunately, that has changed quite a bit, both with the start of the presidency of Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but also in particular as a result of the crackdown that happened following the 2009 disputed elections.
AMANPOUR: So in about '97 to about 2003, there was a flowering of journalism, of all sorts of things.
SANEI: That's correct. There was not only a flowering of journalism, but there was also quite a few non-governmental organizations, also human rights activists and lots of human rights lawyers who were extremely active during Khatami's era, and also political dissidents and political opposition members who were very active at that time.
AMANPOUR: So that started to be reversed in 2005 with the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
SANEI: I would say that that actually started to reverse earlier than that. It was the second term of Khatami is really when the conservatives kind of had a backlash and you started to see new constraints on civil society, a lot of newspapers started to close down.
But after 2005, when President Ahmadinejad became the president, things really started to get worse. And, of course, we know what happened in 2009.
AMANPOUR: Well, I was there for the elections of 2009.
But give us some facts and figures of what you call uncivil society, or the decimation of civil society there. What does that look like?
SANEI: Well, what it looks like, Christiane, is that many civil society members, activists -- especially human rights activists -- were throw in prison. After the 2009 elections in particular, the government used the elections as an excuse to essentially go after any sort of dissent and opposition in the country.
That meant going after independent NGOs. It meant going after independent journalists who were critical of the government and it meant going after human rights activists. Many of them were imprisoned -- arbitrary arrests and detentions. Many of them were detained in secret detention facilities, tortured often and put in solitary confinement. They did not have access to lawyers.
Oftentimes they were tried in revolutionary courts in extremely unfair trials and sentenced to five, 10, 15, 20 years in prison sometimes, essentially for doing their job, essentially for speaking out against the government and its actions.
AMANPOUR: Let's talk about the case of Sattar Beheshti, who was a young blogger and his story is well-known. He was -- he died in detention. And he said that he -- before he died, he had sent a message that he had been tortured and badly abused.
The Iranian authorities took some action.
SANEI: They did. They did take some action. I think part of the reason was the outcry, frankly, from international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and other organizations. And they took action, but the action has not been sufficient.
AMANPOUR: So the action they took was what?
SANEI: The action they took was that they announced that there would be an investigation into the blogger's death. And --
AMANPOUR: (Inaudible) the cyber-police?
SANEI: That's right. The head of the -- the Tehran head of the cyber- police has been fired. As far as we know, no high-ranking members of the security forces or other individuals who have been implicated in this have actually been put on trial. There have been some arrests, but we don't know who these individuals are.
AMANPOUR: And, indeed, the British foreign office has sent out a message, saying that they're very disappointed that having taken the initiative to investigate the Iranians, they haven't held anybody accountable. So what should one expect?
SANEI: Well, what we should expect is for there to be transparent investigations into what actually happened to Sattar Beheshti.
AMANPOUR: Is it realistic, given the nature of the state of affairs there?
SANEI: Unfortunately, these types of things have happened before. There have been other bloggers and other individuals, protesters who were killed in detention facilities following the 2009 elections. And we have seen absolutely no justice come out of the Iranian government.
So the next step would really be some sort of independent, international investigation into what has happened with Mr. Sattar Beheshti. And of course, the Iranian government is not willing to allow that type of an investigation to go through.
AMANPOUR: And what about in terms of the crackdown that you've been describing? It's causing a brain drain. It's causing people to flee. I mean, there are figures from the U.N., which says that, you know, 11,000, 18,000 people are fleeing and seeking asylum through the U.N. HCR.
SANEI: That's right. What I would say that we haven't seen a massive exodus. We don't have a refugee problem the way we do in neighboring Syria or the way we did in Iraq during the height of the conflict. But what we see, as I mentioned before, is a slow strangulation of civil society.
We see a number -- a very high number of civil society activists who are fleeing. We didn't necessarily see that in the 1980s or the 1990s. But we're starting to see that now, including human rights lawyers, by the way, many of whom are currently in prison, including many of the colleagues of Nobel peace laureate Nasrin Sotoudeh.
AMANPOUR: Yes, and we're going to be talking about Nasrin Sotoudeh just after the break.
But let me ask you, does pressure work? Or does it just put their backs up? Does international pressure work?
SANEI: I think that international pressure does work to a certain extent. I mean human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, for instance, have asked quite often for targeted human rights sanctions, against individuals, high-ranking individuals and the security forces, the intelligence forces, who are implicated in very serious human rights violations.
And we believe that, to a certain extent, those sanctions, those targeted sanctions against those individuals do work. And of course, we're in the business of making sure that the international community understands exactly what is happening in Iran, despite the fact that they don't allow human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch to enter the country and for us to do our research.
AMANPOUR: You talked about sanctions. There are many complaints from ordinary people out of Iran right now, including human rights activists, that the global sanctions against Iran are hurting the very people that presumably the world doesn't want to hurt, the ordinary people.
SANEI: That's right. Yes, and I mean, we haven't done a quantitative study of the impact, the humanitarian impact of sanctions. But certainly we hear many of the stories that you and others have heard that, in fact, there is a lack of access to medication.
Of course, we know there's high inflation and many other things that are really putting the squeeze not only on human rights activists, but the middle class in Iran. We have never called for broad-based sanctions. It's not thing that Human Rights Watch does. We have, however, called for targeted human rights sanctions against individuals responsible for human rights violations.
AMANPOUR: Faraz Sanei, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
SANEI: Thank you very much for having me.
AMANPOUR: And the struggle for human rights goes on here in the United States as well, with only 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. has 25 percent of the world's prison population, making it the largest jailer on Earth. A disproportionate number of those prisoners are African- American men.
And after a break, we'll return to Iran. We'll put a human face on the fight for human rights.
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine living only on water mixed with sugar and salt. That's the diet of hunger strikers.
And for Nasrin Sotoudeh, it was all the food she had for 49 days. A lawyer and human rights activist in Iran, she was convicted of spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security. And she was sentenced to six years in Iran's notorious Evin Prison, a place full of so many dissident intellectuals that it's been nicknamed Evin University.
Iran denies having any political prisoners, but Sotoudeh became a cause celebre, winning this year's Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought. She's an admirer of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. And Sotoudeh even thanked the judge who sentenced her, saying that she couldn't bear to be free while so many of her clients were still in prison.
But she's also a wife and a mother and when authorities imposed a travel ban on her 12-year-old daughter, Ms. Sotoudeh went on a hunger strike, her second in two years. And when her condition worsened, there was a rising chorus of concern around the world. When an Iranian court recently gave in and lifted the ban on her daughter, Sotoudeh ended her strike.
But it's premature to declare victory. That will come when she walks out of prison, free to be with her family and to do her job. And that's it for tonight's program. Meantime, you can always contact us on our website, amanpour.com. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.
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